An exciting collaboration with the lab of Thomas Meier at Imperial College London has come to fruition, in the shape of a beautiful paper on the ATP synthase from the ‘dirty dozen’ bacterium Acinetobacter baumannii.
Check it out here, if you are interested in new ways of tackling antibiotic resistance:
We did it! After over a decade of work, we finally determined the first ‘high’ (3.2Å) resolution structure of the fungal plasma membrane proton pump, Pma1.
A heroic effort by postdoc Sabine Heit and enriched by exciting molecular dynamics simulations by DPhil student Maxwell Geurts.
Check out the paper in Science Advances here:
Time is flying, and as I am about to come back from maternity leave, it is time for some important updates to be mentioned. New people have started in the lab, and publications have come out – the lab is buzzing with activity! I’ll dedicate individual posts to the big news shortly!
Excited to share the news of our newest publication:
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/32386594/
Congratulations to Sabine Heit who contributed the SERCA-CAD204520 complex crystal structure. See also her related poster here in our gallery
A great collaboration with University of Parma and CaDo Biotech, Copenhagen.
These are unprecendented and difficult times.
Like labs everyhere around the world, also MBU-Lab had to move all their meetings online. Nevertheless, everyone is busy doing literature work, data analysis and structural analysis, and we’ve moved our lab meetings to Zoom.
Thanks everyone for keeping MBU-Lab running strong. Keep up the good work and – most importantly – the good spirits!
Well done, Sam, for making our beautiful lab snowman! Is his name now Chris Tall? ;-D
This year has been way to busy – and the MBU-Lab team has grown! It’s about time to give a proper welcome to our new lab members!
Sam Bannon has started his DPhil this fall, and Max Geurts has joined us for a 6 month rotation at the start of his Wellcome Trust Doctoral Training Programme.
Matthew Hankins has decided to do his 18-week-long 4th year ‘Part II’ project in MBU-Lab, and Katja Schlegel has enriched us with her chemistry background, vising on a 4 month ERASMUS placement from the University of Münster, Germany.
It’s great to have you on the team!
In a new research article published in PLOS ONE, work from the Bublitz lab and the Danish company PCovery has revealed a new class of small molecule compounds, so-called tetrahydrocarbazoles, that are potent inhibitors of the fungal proton pump. 
These compounds can cause a breakdown of the membrane potential in fungal cells and inhibit the growth of fungi in laboratory cultures.
Structural analysis suggests the compounds could block the ion entry pathway of the pump.
Check out our newest paper here: http://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0188620
Sabine Heit is starting today as a postdoc in MBU-Lab. A warm welcome, we’re happy and excited that you’re joining the team!
Time flies when you’re having fun! After 12 frantic weeks, MBU-Lab’s Part II students have flown off into their well deserved Christmas break.
Have a great time with your loved ones, and fingers crossed for X-mas X-tals! It’s so quiet around here without you – looking forward to seeing you again next year!
Maike Bublitz Membrane Protein Research 